


just to keep the ghosts away

by patinamillersbiceps



Category: Bandstand - Oberacker/Oberacker & Taylor
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23741725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patinamillersbiceps/pseuds/patinamillersbiceps
Summary: “We need a trombone though,” Donny said.Nick remembers hearing about how a guy he had played with one night had gotten married while on leave in 1942, how he had young kids now. Nick also remembers a winter night in 1941- a warm club, a dark hotel room, and the bluest eyes in the entire world.Nick only pauses for a second before recommending Wayne Wright.
Relationships: Nick Radel/Wayne Wright
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38





	1. I: Nick

It’s the kind of winter evening that seems like it will last forever. On this night in 1941 it’s cold and dark outside but bright and warm inside the club when Nick Radel walks in, trumpet case in hand. The room is populated with waiters and cleaners making last minute preparations for when the club opens for the night. Nick locates the band and walks over to them.

Davy Zlatic waves him over, a wide grin on his face. “Hey Nick, glad you could make it, you’re really saving our asses here.”

  
“Don’t mention it.” He returned the bassist’s handshake.

  
“Our usual trumpet and trombone players both came down with a stomach flu, both you and Wayne over there are filling in tonight.” He jerked his thumb to a tall man with perfectly parted hair studying some sheet music behind him. “Hey everyone,” Davy calls, and the man looks up, “This is Nick- he’s filling in for Todd tonight!”

  
Nick nodded as a chorus of “heys” drifted over to him. The tall man- Wayne- he reminds himself, nods back with a ghost of a smile before going back to the sheet music.

  
Nick walks up to him. “Do you think the two guys cleaned out their spit valves with the same cloth or what?”

  
To Nick’s satisfaction, the small smile comes back. “Yeah and then both wiped their noses with it.” Wayne replies, and Nick realizes that this guy must have the bluest eyes in the entire world.  
Nick cleared his throat to hide the fact that he was staring, and turned to the sheet music where Wayne had now directed his attention again. “Is that the set?” He asks.

  
Wayne nods. “Yeah. We should be good. Mostly standards.” He moves to the side to give Nick a better view.

  
Nick steps closer. He knew he could easily ask for another set of sheet music; he wonders if Wayne also realizes that and wanted him close anyway, or if Nick was reading too much into a simple situation.

  
He focuses his attention back on the music. Wayne flipped through the set from the beginning- sure enough Nick knew all the songs.

  
“Not really inspired choices.” He says when Wayne has closed the sheet music.

  
Wayne shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says, “I think there’s a sort of peace in the expected. Then again-” another flash of a quick smile- “A little fun now and then is always good.”

The gig goes off without a hitch. Wayne is good, _really_ good. Obscenely good, really. This fact does absolutely nothing to make Nick less attracted to him.

  
Afterwards, when they’re having drinks with the rest of the band and Nick _knows_ Wayne must’ve seen him looking more than he should, the other man announces he has to leave. “It’s been a pleasure playing with you this evening.” He says, pulling on his overcoat and holding his hat in his hand. His eyes meet with Nick’s once more and then, with a small nod he’s gone.

  
Nick doesn’t stick around for much longer after that.

In the alleyway outside, Nick breathes in the cold air, feeling it prick in his lungs.

  
“Took you long enough. I’ve been waiting for you for over ten minutes.”

  
Nick starts and looks to see Wayne leaning on the wall next to him. “Jesus, you scared the shit outta me.”

  
Wayne laughs and pushes himself off the wall and stands so that he’s standing side by side next to Nick. He’s quiet for a moment, and Nick watches as the white clouds of their breathing mingles together in the space above their heads. “I ship out for the war tomorrow.” He says suddenly. “Marines.”

  
“Oh.” Is all Nick can think of to say. “Good luck.” He adds.

  
Wayne turns to face him, his expression unreadable. Nick holds his breath.

  
Then, Wayne was kissing him, and Nick was kissing him back- rough, bruising kisses on lips still partially numb from playing. Wayne’s hands clenched around the lapels of Nick’s coat, backing him against the wall, instruments all but forgotten in the middle of the alley.

  
The brick is pressing against his back and Wayne against his chest and still Nick wants him closer, even impossibly closer. He thinks his heart will burst, surely, with how hard it’s beating and how badly he wants this other man that he barely knows.

  
Wayne wants him too. That much is clear.

  
When they break apart, both breathing hard, Nick barely sputters something about getting out of here, Jesus anyone could walk into the alley and see them before Wayne kisses him again, quickly and fiercely, biting his bottom lip before backing away wordlessly, eyes intent.

  
Nick adjusts his coat and takes his trumpet case that Wayne passes to him and follows behind him, out of the alley and to the cheap hotel just down the street where no one asks any questions.

*

The hotel room is dark but the glow of the moon reflecting off the snow outside that comes in from the curtains gives enough light to see by. Wayne is breathing deeply next to him, Nick can feel as well as see the slow rise and fall of his bare chest. Their legs are tangled up in the damp sheets and the smell of their sweat pervades the air. Nick watches him and wonders if he’s asleep, wonders if he wants him to stay the night, wonders whether or not he should grab his clothes and leave.

  
But he doesn’t want to leave. He can’t remember the last time he didn’t sleep alone and there’s something about this Wayne that makes him wish he never would again.

  
He tells himself he’s being ridiculous. He’s only known the guy a few hours, and he’s shipping overseas tomorrow for Christ’s sake!

  
Wayne must’ve felt Nick’s shifting, for he opened his eyes and turned to him. Watching.

  
Nick wants to touch him, and he does, the tips of his fingers brushing against his cheek, his jaw bone. “This was nice.” He says; he can’t help it.

  
“Yeah.” The small smile comes back, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Wayne looks at his watch. “Shit.” He mutters.

  
Nick looks at his own watch. It’s nearly three in the morning.

  
“I have to catch the train at six.”

  
“Of course.” There goes not sleeping alone, then.

  
Wayne untangles himself from the sheets and stands as he looks for his scattered clothes.

  
It’s Nick’s turn to watch now, not quite wanting to move just yet. As Wayne’s buttoning his shirt Nick asks, “Do you know where they’re sending you?”

  
Wayne pauses, fingers fixing the collar of his shirt. “No.” he says, “Probably the Pacific.”

  
“I signed up two days ago.” Nick’s saying and he has no idea why. He hasn’t told anyone yet. Not that he has many people to tell anything to in general. “Who knows, maybe we’ll meet again over there.”

  
“Who knows.” Wayne echoes even though they both find it so terribly unlikely.

  
When he closes the door it sounds final to Nick.

*

When it’s Nick’s turn to take an early train out of Cleveland and to basic he spends the night before alone. He’s already put most of his stuff into storage, and the rooms seem more than empty.

  
He ends up in Europe. No chance of running into Wayne. He does think that he sees Davy Zlatic from a distance once, but he’s gone before Nick can be certain.

  
Then come the months in the POW camp. Sleepless nights, watching other guys being taken and never heard from again, giving up on being rescued, and wondering when he’ll die.

  
When he does get out, it’s to the news that the war is over and they’ve won. “You can go home now.” He’s told and the words hardly register.

  
He arrives back in Cleveland and he doesn’t know what he fully expected but this is not it. He thought he’d feel relieved at least, thought that he could finally sleep through the night again, thought that things would at least go back to normal, not that normal was all that fantastic to begin with- but all that evades him.  
  


*  
  
  
Then he does run into Davy Zlatic again. A part of Nick thinks that this band idea of Novitski’s is utterly insane. He doesn’t think it will actually work. A band made entirely out of veterans? He figured if the other guys were only half as fucked up as he was than they still would only last a couple of weeks.

  
But it was a hell of a lot better sounding than teaching.

  
“We need a trombone though,” Donny said.

  
Nick remembers hearing about how a guy he had played with one night had gotten married while on leave in 1942, how he had young kids now and I think there’s a sort of peace in the expected. Nick also remembers a winter night in 1941- a warm club, a dark hotel room, and the bluest eyes in the entire world.

  
Nick only pauses for a second before recommending Wayne Wright.


	2. Wayne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wayne comes back

He finds that he can’t sleep until he cleans his gun.

  
There’s something in the rhythm of it; of starting his watch, taking the gun apart in his hands, wiping every individual piece clean, then putting them all back together again, that quiets the noise in Wayne’s head. He checks his watch. He thinks he can do it faster.

  
An hour goes by before he knows it, before he finally puts the gun away back in the box, double, triple checking the lock before fitting the box back in its designated spot in the back of the top shelf of the bedroom closet. Key in the bedside table.

  
Standing in the dim light of the room, on an immaculate rug in a blissfully immaculate silence, Wayne allows himself to breathe deeply. For a while.

  
He looks at his watch again, to check the time. Almost ten o’clock. His wife will be back any moment, and the children were probably fast asleep by now. Wayne was supposed to help Grady with his homework. Multiplication, or fractions, or something; he can’t remember.

  
He remembers his wife telling him to help their son, remembers that there was a scuff on her left shoe and a strand of her hair out of place. Then she was out the door- off to her church function, and he washed the kitchen floor, remade and remade and remade the bed with perfect military corners, and scrubbed the bathroom. Then to the bedroom and the top shelf of the closet. Trying to make the noise in his head go away.

  
A year into service, he got a month-long leave. He came back home to Cleveland because he didn’t know where else to go. But everyone he knew was gone, off to war, and Wayne was left driftless.

  
He met her at a diner; she was a waitress with a bright smile and kind eyes and Wayne needed a friendly face in his life. They got engaged after two weeks, and married shortly before he went back to the front. He only saw her, and later their children, a few times during the war.

  
He was always a stranger to them, and now he was a ghost on top of it, that much he knew.

  
His thoughts went to Nick Radel. Speaking of ghosts. The other man didn’t go with Donny to persuade him to join the band, but Wayne knew he must have been the one who had recommended him.

  
He had seen Nick around since he’d been back. The first being at The Pavilion after a gig. He had been walking out the door when he heard a voice behind him.

>   
>  _“I heard you’re married now.”_   
>  _“I am.”_   
>  _“I hope you don’t regret it.”_   
>  _“Are you threatening me?”_   
>  _Nick stepped back, hands raised. “You’ll recall that I can’t expose you without implementing myself, remember?”_   
>  _Wayne relaxed. “That’s true.” He checked his watch. Two minutes late. “I have to get back home. Good night.” And he was gone without waiting for a reply._

The front door opens, and Wayne is broken out of his reverie.

*

They win the state competition. It’s a thrill that’s dashed in minutes.

  
“So, If by some miracle we raise enough money in time we gotta call you to tell you we’re gonna pay our own way, put ourselves up, and then we still gotta audition with no guarantee we’ll even be on the- don’t touch me!” He snaps at Jimmy, reaching out to touch his shoulder.

  
“I don’t make the rules.” the man from the broadcast says. Wayne wants to punch him in the face. He turns and stalks away as Davy and Johnny narrow in on the guy. He looks across the room to Nick, who, after his one quip- that he fought Hitler so that they could sell Aspirin- has been silent, standing in the back of the room.

Davy laughs. “Well who does! ‘Cause maybe they take suggestions. Like throwing us on a plane, see how many of us make it parachuting in; or a three day march! Hey, it’s winter, so some of us lose a few toes!”

  
“We don’t ask for much, we dig our own latrines!” Johnny added.  
  
“Yeah, don’t need clean water.” Wayne mumbled, looking away from the silent Nick and back to the rest of his bandmates.  
  
“What’s a little dysentery between friends?”  
  
“Hey you remember that right? Because you were there, right?  
  
“Or were you in your fucking corner office?”  
  
The man looks between Johnny and Davy and all but thrusts the papers into Jimmy’s hands. “This copy is yours, again congratulations, it’s a swell tune.” He says, already halfway out the door.  
Davy laughs that short, sardonic laugh again. “How many bottles will it take to make this one go away?” He calls out.

  
Wayne steps up. “I can think of something quicker.” He says, dimly aware of his right hand tugging at his wedding ring, the warm metal smooth under his hand. “It never ends.”

  
And then Donny is telling them of the Pullman cars and Grand Central, of the Astor and Times Square and Wayne wants so much to be there. Anywhere but here. He looks across the room to Nick again, still silent and stoic. Wayne wonders if he’s regretting sticking with them, thinking he should’ve stuck with Dwight Anson, and helped him win instead. Maybe then he wouldn’t be in this shitty situation.

  
Nick catches him looking. He stares back and it’s almost like a challenge. Like he knew exactly what Wayne was thinking of him. Wayne gets a shiver up his spine and he’s not quite sure why.  
As quickly as he started Nick looks away and now he’s nodding, joining in with Donny and the others. Wayne looks away and busies himself with cleaning down his trombone case, shame and something else he can’t name in his gut. The old Nick that he had barely known all those years ago couldn’t read his mind like this.

  
Nick is all in with them. Wayne looks around and sees six faces staring back at him, six faces staring at each other across the room, backs straight and eyes shining with determination.

  
Right this way.

Donny and Julia are churning out more and more new songs, and more and more gigs somehow keep lining up. It’s not enough, Wayne knows. It’ll take a miracle to get them to New York in time. But it’s an unspoken rule that nobody talks about that; that when they speak of New York it’s always a _when_ never an _if_. Because they have to get there. They just have to.

  
That’s the reason why, on Friday when Donny announces that they have a gig on Sunday, Wayne grits his teeth and nods his head, trying not to think about the schedule in his brain that just got shot down. Dinner with his family. Focuses instead on a smudge on Nick’s trumpet, and wipes it down for him, ignoring the other man’s bewildered look. If Wayne notices that Nick doesn’t lay into him for touching his instrument, he doesn’t dwell on it for long.

  
Wayne puts his handkerchief back into his back pocket. “Good night everyone.” he says, picking up his own case and walking out the door.

It’s close to eleven by the time he gets home. His wife is still awake and waiting for him when he walks into the kitchen. In front of her is a familiar locked box with a familiar key next to it on the table.

  
“You’re still awake.” Wayne says because he doesn’t know what else to say.

  
She nods, folding her hands across the top of the box. The red paint on her index finger was chipped, he saw. “Grady found this in the closet. Along with the key.”

  
Wayne’s mouth went dry. He set his trombone case down by the door frame and fidgeted with his ring. “I don’t- there aren't any bullets-”

  
She presses her hands to her forehead and shakes her head. “No. no I don’t want to hear it- what if there were? Why do you have a gun in the house, around our children?” Then- “If this was the only thing I could forgive it, but it’s not and we both know that.”

  
“But-”

  
“You better not say that you’ll change because you already have and that’s the problem.” She had kept her face staring ahead towards the wall but now at last she turns towards him and her eyes are cold, with only a faint tinge of red around the lids.

  
“So have you.” He says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's Chapter 2! I'll hopefully have Chapter 3 next week!


	3. Both of Them

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn’t know what he was thinking, inviting Wayne to live with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah ok, so I know I said the last chapter would be up in about a week and it's been like... 7 months...but better late than never...right??? right????

Nick notices that Wayne has been hanging around after sets with the band instead of rushing back home to his wife and kids immediately. He’ll sit with them at a large table, chatting and cradling a whiskey (neat, of course- just like the rest of him).

Nick corners him one of these nights as Wayne is putting up a flyer for the band on the club’s notice board. “Say aren’t you running late? I know how your wife falls to pieces if you’re off your schedule.”

Wayne stiffens slightly at the sarcastic comment. “Well that’s the thing, I guess she fell to pieces because of my schedule.” Nick raised his eyebrows at this. “I forget they’re not my troops. You can’t run a household like you run a platoon. I’ve been staying at the Hotel Euclid this past week.”

“Shit, Lieutenant, I’m sorry to hear that-.”  
“Give me a break. You’re loving this.”

Nick paused. Wayne had managed to carve out a normal life for himself, that was true; a wife, two kids- access to the expected and respected life that men their age were supposed to find regardless of whether or not it brought them happiness. Something Nick hasn’t done. Probably can't. Now though, it had all blown up in Wayne’s face; a testament and a reminder of the fact that after all this time they were still cut from the same cloth.

“Get your things and come to my place.” The words come out of his mouth before he really understands what he’s saying.

Wayne turns to look at him. “No,” he says, “I’m staying at the hotel-”

“Consider that an order, you screwy nutcase.” Nick jokes, taking the posters out of his hand, and brushing off the unsaid words between them. “You keep things spotless, right?”

It’s Wayne’s turn to raise his eyebrows. He straightened up, with a hint of that old amusing glint in his eye. “What do you think?”

“I think I just got a live-in maid.”

*

The interiors of most people’s houses reflected their innermost personalities. Nick was not one of these people. It was impossible to tell anything at all about him from his surroundings, then again, the opposite could also be said, Wayne decided. Nick’s house, just like the man himself, was a carefully curated collection of pieces put together to reveal nothing and guard everything. There were no pictures on the shelf, the few books in the bookcase were the ones that were in every bookcase, no knick-knacks or souvenirs on the side tables. The record collection was far too vast to discern any idea of personal taste. It was dusty, too, with an opened box of crackers left on the table, glasses out of the cupboard, and stray shoes kicked about.

“Welcome home.” Nick says gruffly, discarding his coat on the back of the nearest chair. “The guest room’s down that hall though the first door on the left. Bathroom’s thataway.” He indicates with two nods of his head.

Wayne nods. “Thanks, really Nick- I owe you.”

Nick shrugs, noncommittal. “If you can make it neat in here I’ll call it square.” He looks at the other man for a moment, and Wayne thinks he’s about to say something else, but then he turns and leaves Wayne standing in the kitchen to get himself settled. Alone.

*

Wayne learns a few new things about Nick.

1) He can cook. Actually, seriously cook. When Wayne brings it up, Nick answers with a deadpan look and a remark about how it’s not like he’d ever have a wife so why wouldn’t he learn how to fend for himself? Wayne nods and doesn’t mention the week-old stack of plates in the sink, but cleans them anyway.

2) He would never admit to it, but a small part of Nick does like teaching. When Nick comes home from teaching a new student, he talks for about thirty minutes about how much potential she has and the progress she’s made already. Wayne smiles and keeps his eyes on the ironing board to distract himself from the way Nick’s face lights up when he’s pleased.

3) He can fall asleep almost anywhere. It takes Wayne several hours of silence and darkness to drift into sleep, but Nick can put his feet up on the couch and be out like a light in minutes. Wayne puts it to Nick having to get sleep when he could in the POW camp. The problem was, though, in staying asleep. Like Wayne, Nick is also plagued with nightmares. Wayne dreams of all the people he couldn’t save; their faces accusing him, their hands grabbing at his uniform. He wonders what haunts Nick behind his eyes.

They settle into something that resembles a routine. Wayne enjoys that, the routine, and he can tell that, though he would never admit it, Nick likes it to. Their routine. It’s a bit like a dance, moving around each other without ever once colliding.

Nick cooks breakfast, Wayne makes coffee.

Wayne does the dishes, Nick takes a shower.

Nick leaves to teach a few lessons, Wayne reunites Nick’s single socks into matching pairs.

Wayne sweeps the floor, Nick returns and pretends not to notice the socks.

Nick cooks dinner, Wayne irons.

They leave together out the door, instruments in hand to the night’s gig, leaving a foot of space in between them. Respectable.

Nick watches Wayne, Wayne pretends not to notice.

Wayne watches Nick, Nick pretends not to notice.

They return together, coats hanging side by side, shoes off (Wayne’s request) and standing side by side by the door like four small soldiers.

Nick turns on the radio for a few hours, Wayne gets his gun from the box from under his bed.

The first few weeks, Nick tried to ignore this nightly ritual. Just as he tried to ignore a lot of the things involving Wayne. Namely, how he made him feel. Now though, he’s given up on that lot, and he watches this ritual from his place on the couch as Wayne stands over the kitchen table; long, careful fingers moving along the cold metal, his gaze intent on his task.

Nick knows better than to interrupt him, so he waits until at long lost, Wayne puts the gun back into the box, locking it, then checking the lock two more times before asking his question: “What happened over there?”

Wayne stiffens. They don’t talk about the war; another unspoken rule amongst them all in the band. Sure, he knows the general story of each man; knows about Davy at Dachau, Jimmy’s boat being torpedoed, Johnny’s jeep flipping, knows that Donny served with Julia’s husband. He knows Nick was a prisoner of war. But they don’t talk about it.

But he can feel Nick’s eyes on him from the other room, steady and unrelenting.

“It was hell.” He says, “I was terrified all the time that something would go terribly wrong and it would be all my fault. And things did go wrong. Guys that I should have protected died. I think about how I could have saved them; if I had been faster, if I had done something different in the moment…” He trails off, still unable to meet Nick’s eyes.

Nick recalls, what seems like a lifetime ago now, when a man with the bluest eyes in the world had said, _“Then again a little fun now and then is always good.”_ and had taken a man he barely knew to a dark and slightly dusty hotel room on a careless whim.

The man who had said those words was gone, left behind somewhere in the Pacific.

But so was the man he had spoken them to, left behind in a POW camp.

They hardly knew each other then, and when they saw each other again, they knew one another even less. Four years, thousands of miles and an ocean and a continent stood between them in the space of the fifteen feet from the couch to the table.

“I understand.” Nick says, finally. And he does. More than just Wayne, he understands the utter impossibility of the predicament he finds themselves in. He doesn’t know what he was thinking, inviting Wayne to live with him. Did he honestly expect this New Wayne to take this New Nick in his arms? Kiss him and push him against the wall for old times sake? That they could pick up where the Old Wayne and the Old Nick had left off?

Fucking ridiculous.

*

It’s a miracle, but they get to New York. Wayne tries to focus on the accomplishment of that to keep his mind off of how many germs are probably everywhere.

Midtown Manhattan is loud and bright, and Wayne wonders how he’ll ever be able to fall asleep that night.

Donny had made the room assignments. It of course makes sense that he put Wayne with Nick, they live together after all, but as he’s putting his clothes into the dresser by his bed, neatly refolding his shirts, Wayne can’t help but be reminded of the last time he was alone in a hotel room with the other man. There had only been one bed then, not that they would have noticed a second, and they left their clothes scattered on the floor.

Wayne can’t imagine doing that now. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to, God knows he wanted to. It’s the first thing he wanted to do the first night Nick brought him to his place, before he got distracted by the open box of crackers on the table.

But he screwed things up with Nick once before, and he screwed things up with his wife. If he ruins what he has now with Nick, whatever it is they have, for the sake of a tumble in the sheets, Wayne knows that it’s one mess he won’t be able to clean up.

He looks at Donny and Julia and he knows that they’re at a similar impasse. Guilt and mourning wrapped up in a neat little package. But as the band hits the town that night, he sees how at ease they are side by side, and he knows that eventually they’ll get through it. He’s happy for them, truly.

Later, Donny insists on walking Julia to her room on the floor above theirs, and Davy might be the most sober Wayne has seen him at this point in the night, but not sober enough to resist making an inappropriate joke about it. Julia takes it in stride and laughs, bidding them goodnight, as Donny’s face turns bright red.

And then he’s alone with Nick in a hotel room again.

He wonders if the parallels are as clear to him as they are to Wayne, wonders if he should say something, anything to bite through the tension that’s been in the air since the door clicked behind them, even if it’s just a bad joke. Remember when…

“Well, goodnight then.” Wayne starts, broken from his thoughts. Nick is already in his bed, reaching to turn off his light. “Big day tomorrow. Get some beauty sleep, Lieutenant.”

“Goodnight.” Wayne says, lining his shoes up by the door.

Nick is already asleep, his back turned away from him, by the time Wayne slips into his own bed.

*

It’s dark, and Nick is cold. He’s been cold for… he doesn't remember how long for. He doesn’t know where he is, only that he’s miles from the Allied Forces, and even further from home. Cleveland seems like a world away. He's alone, too. They pulled the last guy away a few hours ago, and he hasn’t come back. It’s only a matter of time before they come for Nick, to try to pick him for information he doesn’t have.

A dark shadow crosses in front of him, and grabs Nick. He can’t see any faces, he can never see any faces. The shadow hauls him towards the exit, and Nick knows in his bones that if he leaves now, he’ll never come back alive. He struggles, trying to get free, but there’s a weight on his chest, on his legs, pushing him down, keeping him under and he’s trying but he can’t fucking _breathe_. He gets an arm free and swings, his hand connecting with something solid.

“Ow, Jesus Christ!” a voice from the darkness exclaims. A familiar voice.

“What the hell, _Wayne_?”

A light turns on and Nick can see the other man sitting on the edge of Nick’s bed. His hair is sticking up, tousled by sleep, and it’s a look so utterly unlike him that under different circumstances Nick would have found it funny.

“You were dreaming. A nightmare.” Wayne says, blinking against the light.

“I’m sorry, I woke you up.”

Wayne shrugs. “It’s fine.”

Nick rubs his hand across his face, his heart still beating rapidly in his chest.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He can feel Wayne’s eyes on his, can feel how close he’s sitting to Nick.

“Not particularly.” But something in him breaks, and Nick can’t stop the tears that spring to his eyes. “Fuck. Goddamnit.”

“Hey. Hey, it’s alright.” Wayne’s voice is soft, and even closer than before.

And Nick feels a hand on his face.

He can’t recall the last time he and Wayne actually touched each other, but this feels natural, right. He thinks, for a moment, that Wayne is going to kiss him.

“Right then,” Wayne says, “move over.”

“What?”

“Move over.”

Nick does, and Wayne moves under the covers next to him, pulling the blankets over them both and turning out the light. Nick feels as though the two of them are on a thin balance beam; one tilt too far to one side, and they would both come tumbling down.

He closes his eyes and concentrates on Wayne’s steady breathing next to him.

*

They lose the national competition for the same reason they won the state competition: They just had to.

But hell, did they ever blow it up.

They’re the losers, but it’s them who are approached by managers and record owners and club owners, and by that evening they have gigs for the next week in New York with the promise of a nationwide tour. They go out for drinks to celebrate, and it’s nearly one in the morning when the Donny Nova Band featuring Julia Trojan stumble back into the hotel lobby, a Shakespeare-quoting Davy being held up between Jimmy and Donny (but mostly Donny).

Wayne had watched Donny and Julia, a part of him happy for them, a part of him, a smaller part, envious because they clearly had more courage than him. Courage to act, to mess up the delicate balance that they had between them.

For the first time in his life, Wayne wants to make a mess of things.

“Jesus, what a day.” They’re in their hotel room now, Nick kicking off his shoes.

“Yeah.” Wayne agrees, pretending to be engrossed by the buttons on his jacket.

‘Hey, about last night-” Wayne’s head jerks up and his stomach drops like a stone. “I, well, I just wanted to say that it was nice and,” Wayne lets out a breath. “I know you just left your wife, but-”

Wayne moves across the room and his mouth is on his in a second.

“Oh thank God I thought you were going to make me ramble like an idiot.” Nick says, breathless.

“You can keep going-”

“I’d rather not.” he says, and Wayne kisses him again.

In a way it’s similar to their first time. Urgent with desperate need, sweat and tangled hotel sheets. Except in the way it’s also completely different. They aren’t near strangers anymore. Wayne is sure he has never known anyone more than this man next to him, has never cared more about another person in his life.

Later, when they’re exhausted and spent with the lights of Manhattan coming through the window, Wayne will find it easy, for the first time in his life, to drift off into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So tbh i'm not a military history buff, and upon some research (that I should have done before writing this fic opps) I realize now that it makes more sense that Nick would have been held in a Japanese POW camp, not a Nazi or Italian one, which is what I allude to in the story with Nick serving in the European theater in chapter 1, since Germany signed and ratified the Geneva convention additions after WWI and thus had to abide by them in WWII, allowing the Red Cross to deliver supplies to POWs, and that the POWs themselves had to be treated humanely. Japan signed but did not ratify the Geneva convention, and thus POWs held by the Japanese were often treated far worse. From what I read, the mortality rate in Nazi and Italian POW camps was about 1%, and about 40% in Japanese camps. This is not me saying that the Nazi's and Italians were nicer, though. I shouldn't have to say that, but don't take it that way. Anyways, I still had to make the POW camp Nick was in bad, so just make like the U.S Republican Party and ignore the facts on this one pls :) 
> 
> TL;DR: I'm playing fast and loose with history a bit. My bad. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this story and I hope the end was somewhat worth the wait. Please review and make me feel like it was worth it.


End file.
